Moz protests in the Mantra. Photo: Mostafa Azimitabar
The Human Rights Law Centre has welcomed news the last remaining refugees on Nauru will soon depart the island, but wants those still languishing in Papua New Guinea to also be allowed to leave.
These are the last of the hundreds of people that Australia detained on offshore islands from 2013 because they tried to enter Australia by boat.
The senior lawyer for the Centre, Scott Cosgriff, said the Australian Government has inflicted "untold suffering" upon people who were merely seeking safety.
While the numbers on Nauru continue to fall as a result of transfers to Australia and resettlement in other countries, more than 80 people, previously detained on Manus Island, remain in the PNG capital, Port Moresby.
Some of them have serious health problems caused by years of detention, isolation and medical neglect.
More than 100 people were left in PNG when the former government announced the end of Australia's involvement in offshore processing in the country at the end of 2021.
Lawyer Scott Cosgriff Photo: Supplied
While no new transfers to Nauru or PNG have occurred since 2014, the Albanese government has confirmed that it will maintain facilities for offshore processing in Nauru as a contingency.
"Across more than a decade in Nauru and PNG, the Australian Government has inflicted untold suffering upon people merely asking for safety," said Scott Cosgriff.
"Evacuating Nauru is the right thing to do. Anything less than the same approach in relation to PNG is a profound failure of people whose dire circumstances were caused by this policy and whose lives remain in the Australian Government's hands.
"It is clear that Australia has been responsible for their safety and their future since the day they arrived and that continues to this day, irrespective of what announcement might have been made on paper in the past."
Cosgriff said the Australian Government bears the same responsibility to the people it sent to PNG as to those it sent to Nauru.
"Too often, the victims of this policy have been shunted from one agonising limbo to another.
"Those now rebuilding their lives in Australia must be allowed to live in freedom, without crippling visa restrictions and with certainty about their future."
